Rafael Nadal ends 2021 season: 'Suffering a lot more than I should with my foot'

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Spain tennis star Rafael Nadal announced on Friday that he would be ending his 2021 season with immediate effect. Nadal said that he had been suffering with his foot "a lot more than he should," adding that he will now focus on his recovery.

The 35-year-old had withdrawn from the Wimbledon and the Olympics earlier. He was last seen in action during the 2021 French Open, where he lost in the semifinals to the eventual champion, Novak Djokovic.

"Hello everyone, I wanted to inform you that unfortunately I have to end the 2021 season. Honestly, I've been suffering a lot more than I should with my foot for a year and I need to take some time," wrote Nadal on his official Twitter profile.

"After having discussed it with the team and family, this decision has been made and I think it is the way forward to try to recover and recover well. It's a year that I've missed things that matter a lot to me, like Wimbledon, like the Olympics, how the United States Open is going to be now, like many other events that are also important to me and in view of the fact that during this last year I have not had the ability to train and prepare and compete in the way that I really like do it."

Nadal further wrote that he needed time to recover from the injury which had been troubling him since 2005.

"In the end, I come to the conclusion that what I need is time to recover, change a series of things, try to understand what has been the evolution of their feet in recent times, it is not a new injury, it is an injury that I have had since 2005 and it has prevented me from developing my sports career during all these years. 

It is time to make decisions, seek a slightly different type of treatment to find a solution to this problem or at least improve it in order to continue to have options for the next few years.

"I am with maximum enthusiasm and predisposition to do whatever it takes to recover the best possible form to keep competing for the things that really motivate me and the things that I've done all these years," Nadal wrote.

Earlier, Roger Federer had also withdrew from the US Open and will remain absent from the tennis action for the rest of the year. The Swiss tennis star will undergo knee surgery, and in a statement, said that he will return to the courts soon.